An indigenous federation from south-east Peru wants exploration operations by US company Hunt Oil in a supposedly protected reserve in the Amazon to be suspended.

“This is not a fight against investment but a fight for a socially just, environmentally balanced and moral development,” says FENAMAD, which claims to represent seven indigenous peoples and more than 30 communities in Peru’s Madre de Dios region, in a statement released last Friday. “As a result we request. . . that operations – which are putting the cultural patrimony of the Harakbut people, the region and nation at risk – are stopped while the Master Plan for the Amarakaeri Communal Reserve [ACR] is brought up-to-date.”

FENAMAD states that there are “archaeological remains” in the ACR within “direct influence” of Hunt’s drilling, that the company itself has acknowledged this, and that as a result the Culture Ministry should intervene.

FENAMAD also makes six other requests, including that the process by which Hunt obtained its licence is investigated, that its contract is revised, that the heart of the ACR is kept “healthy”, and that indigenous peoples’ “own vision” of development is respected. The final demand reads:

We request, in the name of Peru’s indigenous peoples, that Hunt Oil, representatives of the national and regional government, the Ministry of Energy, and professionals from the extractive sector in general abandon, for ethical and moral reasons, opportunism, egoism and avarice, and respect the rights and territories of indigenous peoples.

The concession where Hunt is operating, Lot 76, is estimated by the Energy Ministry to hold over 12 trillion cubic feet of natural gas – which could be more than Peru’s two biggest currently-producing concessions, Lot 56 and Lot 88, combined.

Hunt signed a contract to operate in Lot 76 in 2006 when the concession overlapped more than 90% of the ACR – a “protected natural area” created in 2002, according to the National Service for Protected Natural Areas (SERNANP), for the Harakbut and to “protect a centre of great biological diversity.”

According to FENAMAD, the ACR is to “protect the headwaters of the rivers in Madre de Dios and the ancestral territories of the Harakbut,” and Peru’s decision to contract Hunt violated an international law giving indigenous peoples the “right to free, prior and informed consultation.”

Now, after a boundary modification, Lot 76 overlaps almost 80% of the ACR, and an Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) of Hunt’s plans to drill eight exploratory wells and conduct 3D seismic tests was approved by the Energy Ministry in August 2013.

According to the EIA, written together by Hunt and a consultancy, Domus, all eight of the exploratory wells and more than half of the area required for the 3D seismic tests – 240,000 hectares in total – will be in the ACR.

The current “Master Plan” for the ACR – describing the aims, uses, programs and general policies of the reserve – was approved by SERNANP in February 2008, but was only scheduled to last until 2012.

FENAMAD’s president, Klaus Quicque, criticized Hunt at a meeting about Lot 76 held at the National Amazon University of Madre de Dios on 15 February, saying that the company was exploiting the state’s absence in the region and creating divisions in indigenous communities.

Quicque told The Guardian that Hunt has been building a base-camp outside the ACR, but that it intends, according to company personnel, to start drilling its first well inside the reserve before the end of the year.

Quicque emphasized updating the “Master Plan” and documenting and protecting the archaeological remains, and the importance of the ACR because of the “environmental services” it provides – not just to indigenous peoples but many others living downstream.

FENAMAD’s call for suspension follows a letter to Hunt’s Barbara Bruce Ventura from the president of the ACR’s administration team accusing the firm of breaking promises and shutting the team and FENAMAD out of a process to implement an environmental monitoring program.

The team’s president, Fermin Chimatani Tayori, told The Guardian that bringing the “Master Plan” up-to-date would take “at least a year, approximately”, but that Hunt hoped to start drilling by the end of 2014.

Chimatani stressed the significance of the ACR, saying that it contains archaeological remains, a “unique biodiversity”, a wide variety of animals, and places of spiritual and mythological importance to the Harakbut.

“The exploration is putting this at risk,” he says, “but it’s ours, the Harakbut’s, and it’s Peru’s and it’s the world’s too. It’s important that it is saved, that it is acknowledged. We know they are there. They aren’t recognized in the Master Plan, but they should be.”

Asked by The Guardian how it would respond to FENAMAD’s request for intervention, the Culture Ministry provided this statement:

Our point of view is that the updating of the Master Plan should be discussed, but that this needs to be dealt with by the relevant authority, SERNANP. . . Regarding the second point [about the archaeological remains], the Ministry has received no official request, but we have spoken with FENAMAD’s president in order to formalize their request and we can help with it.

The Culture Ministry subsequently provided a second statement saying it had given Hunt permission to carry out an archaeological evaluation of the area scheduled for drilling and seismic tests, which found “ten areas free of surface archaeological evidence.”

However, the Ministry did not state exactly where those ten areas are in relation to the proposed wells and tests, and it said that Hunt has not submitted an “Archaeological Monitoring Plan” for those areas which the Ministry must approve “in case [the company] wants to do work involving moving earth.”

Hunt also has significant stakes in Lot 56 and Lot 88, together known as the Camisea gas project. Expansion in Lot 88 was approved by the Energy Ministry last month, despite calls from UN entities and sectors from Peruvian and international civil society to suspend it.